February 08, 2009

Joseph Ferdinand Cheval, le Palais Idéal/The Ideal Palace

The Palais Idéal is among the best known art environments in the world. It is quite possible this creation inspired other outsiders (in France and elsewhere) to make their creations and it is quite sure that it aroused the interest of mainstream artists and writers (like André Breton, who discovered the Palais in 1931).

old postcard with Cheval posing in front of his creation

Life and works

Joseph Ferdinand Cheval (1836-1924) from the small community of Hauterives, south of Lyon, France, was a postman (in french a facteur). It was his job to distribute the post to the inhabitants of his district, a walk of 32 kilometers he daily made.

The story has been told many times: one day doing his 32 kms he stumbled upon a rock, was surprised by its form and got the idea to realise the dream he sometimes had during his post distributing tours: to create a beautiful building.

Starting in 1879, when in his early fourties, Cheval continued this creative job for 33 years, all by himself, just using simple utensils.

In 1912 he had completed his creation: a building 26 m (85 ft) wide, 14 m (46 ft) deep and between 8 and 10 m 26/33 ft) high

Cheval had said he wanted to be buried in his Palais, but the authorities would not allow this, so on the local cemetery he also constructed a tomb. It took him some eight years to complete it.

He has been buried there in 1924.

Recognition

It took some time before official France acknowledged the importance of facteur Cheval´s achievement, but despite strong opposition, in 1969 France's Culture Minister formally declared that the site was a Monument Historique.

It took some more time before the national Musée de la Poste did honour facteur Cheval, but in 2007 an exposition in this Paris museum was organised in respect to his life and creative work.

Owned by the city of Hauterives since 1994, the site attracts over a 100.000 visitors a year. It can be visited daily the year round.

In short

If you are looking for a specific art environment, best use the the indexes above, by which one can select by

- name of the artist, or by- country/region

About this blog

This blog is an inventory and documentary of outsider art environments in Europe.

It is about people who without relevant professional training, during many years and with a lot of passion transform their house/garden into a relatively large-scale artwork by embellishing it with decorations, paintings, mosaics, sculptures and/or structures, in general doing this outside of and disregarded by the world of professionals.